It's nice to find just the right container for the job, especially if it's cheap or free!This week I had the good luck to find out about some free food-safe plastic buckets. Apparently the institutional kitchen at my workplace just throws them away unless someone asks to have them.
I found out about this by chance, when I saw a co-worker walking down the hall with two 5 gallon buckets, with lids! I was so enthusiastic about the buckets that he kindly gave me one of them, and told me how to get more -- as many as I wanted really, because the kitchen apparently throws these out "by the hundreds." I hope to get my hands on 50 or so. I'll use several of them for storing larger quantities of sugar, flour, wheat berries, all sorts of stuff! And then I'll save some to give away or trade - the buckets are nicely stack-able and won't take up much space. I may even invest in some of those fancy gamma lids, if I can find them for a good price.
Another
handy low-cost item has been my canning-jar-turned-sprout-starter. I bought a mesh lid that fits on any wide-mouth mason jar, and it works really well to grow little batches of alfalfa sprouts. I have to try sprouting some other kinds of seeds too, since we are really enjoying the nice fresh taste of sprouts as we cope with the last couple months of Winter. The fresh green sprouts are a nice reminder that Spring is coming, eventually.
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6 comments:
Awesome idea about the mesh jar. We've got a little burlap bag, but it's tough to clean.
Might have to steal it...
Hey - where'd you get the mesh lid? Sounds handy.
Great idea - I've been wanting to grow sprouts (even have seeds handy) -- but didn't want to use paper towels per the instructions I found. I'm with Peak Oil HF - where'd you get the mesh? Tx!
I get pickle buckets from a deli in the city - they charge $2 a piece - I LOVE that you can get them for free!
Where do you get the seeds to use for sprouting?
That is really cool about the free containers! You can really stock up now with all that storage. I can't believe they would just throw those away!
Also, would you mind giving a brief tutorial on growing sprouts? I am probably being really dumb here, but I am a gardening beginner, and have wanted to do sprouts for awhile, but am unsure how to do it.
Thanks everyone for your kind comments and interest. I got the plastic mesh lid at my local health food store, which is also where I got the organic alfalfa seeds for sprouting.
I will do a post about how to sprout the seeds shortly - I just have to find my camera so I can take a picture of the lid/jar set-up. I seem to have misplaced my camera somewhere - I hope I didn't leave it at the museum (where we went today for Family Day).....
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